


The Art Of Being Free

by Monster Merlin (ScribeAzari)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Recovery, friends being there for each other, they aren't okay but they're getting there slowly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 17:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17430605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribeAzari/pseuds/Monster%20Merlin
Summary: For some, stepping out into the sun was only the first step to feeling free. On such a long road, it helps to have a friend who understands.





	The Art Of Being Free

One was crouched in on herself like a nervous vole, clawed hands fidgeting even as the sun warmed her scales. One was slouched with an ease his fixed smile only seemed to reflect, some unspoken tension keeping him from the relaxation he affected. Both were small beings, with seeping cold weights sapping at their souls from the pasts they were trying to move forward from.

It wasn’t like some of those superhero movies a certain loud fellow was fond of, where someone could put aside all the pain so quickly, as though it wasn’t laced through their entire being like the hyphae of some fungus. As though it was that easy to power through. Well, it wasn’t as though trimming that didn’t help the movie makers keep the films to a reasonable length, but while they  _ were _ something they could do with those they cared about, watching them didn’t really help.

What did help, however, was being there. Even if no words were spoken, the quiet presence of someone who  _ knew _ and  _ understood _ \- it went a long way. It felt  _ safe, _ and hardly required any interaction if one or both of them wasn’t up to it. Sometimes, there were words, with or without context. It was still difficult - so difficult - to allow such tightly-held secrets to unfurl, but sometimes they crept out, or leapt out, and it could feel like surrender and freedom at the same time. It was  _ safe _ \- they were more alike than they’d known, and they needed this so badly but it was so hard to even try to address it with anyone who didn’t already get it.

All of the guilt, all of the fear and the desperate inaction and dissolving hopes - slowly, they were eroding these parts of the heavy hollowness they carried within, which their families and friends could fill back up with warmth and care as they went along. It wasn’t a thing they’d ever acknowledged aloud, more like a quiet accord that had woven itself between them gradually as they began to see themselves in one another.

Being who they were, they were not solemn and still each and every time they slipped over to check in on each other. They shared jokes and ‘nerdisms’, unhealthy snacks and stories of their loved ones. It was so nice to be able to simply  _ be, _ without anyone asking what was wrong, or trying to drag them into an activity that was too noisy and full of bustle for their headspace for the sake of perking them up.

One thing they liked to do together, when it felt right, was create. It felt so good to see and feel something coming together and not going horribly wrong, even if it came apart, because it was something that  _ wasn’t _ hugely important and valuable. It didn’t have to be anything in particular - decorating mugs worked, or playing with Lego, or flicking paint onto paper. There was no pressure to do more than click a few blocks together, or make a smear, because this was for them and nobody else, and there were no deadlines or crushing consequences.

They didn’t work with clay, because of how  _ melty _ it could look, but maybe they would someday. They didn’t watch anything with too much mad science or  _ looping, _ but… maybe eventually. Not before they were ready to face it. They knew, though, that if they ever  _ were _ ready, they would have support. They would not have to rush, or face anything as alone as they had felt before. They had someone who knew how to reach them if  _ now _ seemed to give way to  _ then, _ and talk them back to the present.

They didn’t always put very much effort into the things they made - this was a thing  _ against _ stress - but sometimes one or both of them might get an idea that they couldn’t resist wanting to bring into reality. For her, it had been sketches of characters from the very first anime she’d ever seen, but as monsters. The look on her face as she rediscovered them through her pencil was warming in the same way sunrise and a hot meal were, and it lit in him the motivation to construct a wire-frame bucky ball the size of his head.

There was no explanation, and he slid back into scrawling his name vaguely onto things afterwards - but he had glowed with the luminance of once-forgotten joy for a precious few moments when he’d held out the model buckminsterfullerene for her to see, and they’d spent at least an hour just rolling it around and making silly noises to amuse themselves.

It was moments like these that brought home to them how far they’d already come, and that things were a lot closer to okay than they had been before. For some, freedom came more slowly than stepping out into the sunlight, but it was growing in their souls with every fresh dawn and every moment of deja vu that never came.


End file.
